Slowly moving ahead.
Legalized sports betting has not spread across the United States as quickly as sports leagues such as the NFL and sports cartels such as the NCAA feared. Sportsbooks have opened in Delaware and New Jersey is slowly expanding the availability of sports betting with another Atlantic City hotel offering the service starting on June 28 and the promise of sports betting at the Meadowlands racetrack about seven miles from midtown Manhattan by July 15th. People in the New York City area can spend money crossing the Hudson River and bet on games in New Jersey but they won’t be able to do so in New York as state lawmakers could not come up with a sports betting law by the end of the 2018 legislative session. The same holds true for Fairfield County, Connecticut residents who could make the less than 40 mile trip to the Meadowlands as Connecticut could not get a bill passed legalizing sports gambling in the state.
Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, West Virginia and Mississippi more than likely will have casinos ready for sports betting by the start of the 2018 college football and NFL seasons. State legislators and governors have ignored various sports leagues request for an integrity fee of up to one percent of the action.  Mississippi lawmakers are hopeful that sports betting will attract more people to casinos in Biloxi and Gulfport as the state has seen a downward betting trend in the past decade. Meanwhile Major League Baseball, which has casinos as marketing partners in MLB markets, has told individual teams that they cannot partner with sports books. That means no ad money from sports betting parlors for TV and for in venue signage. Major League Baseball also is of the opinion that Nevada sports betting laws need to be updated because 1949 rules don’t apply in 2018. That complaint maybe about not getting a cut of the action.
States are still trying to get a handle on how to proceed with legalized sports gambling.
